It's not totally accurate to refer to Lindsay Whalen as the Forrest Gump of Minnesota women's basketball, even though extraordinary things tend to happen nonstop all around her.

Whalen is more than just a happy passenger on these basketball locomotives. She currently is the playmaking catalyst of the Minnesota Lynx, who open the WNBA Finals tonight against Atlanta, just as she was for the Golden Gophers when they made it to the Final Four in 2004. She makes things happen. Almost as important, she gets people interested.

She is hip deep in another extraordinary Minnesota basketball run.

"There are some similarities," Whalen said. "The Final Four, March Madness, that was crazy, especially because of where the program had come from. We've had a good feeling all this year, too. It's been fun to be around. There are a lot of people in the stands. A lot of people listen to our games.

"The whole community is behind us."

When Whalen was a freshman on the University of Minnesota women's basketball team, average attendance was about 1,200 per game. The program played second fiddle to, well, anything else that was going on. And most people didn't even know if the team had played the previous evening, never mind whether it had won or lost.

By the time she was a senior, attendance was close to 10,000 per game, the Gophers made it to the Final Four and everybody seemed to care.

For years, the Lynx were a punch line to any number of basketball jokes.

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They always seemed to be a team in transition ... going from bad to worse. But now, in Whalen's second year with them, they have made it to the finals, attendance is way up and people care.

"There were about 50 people waiting for us at the airport at 2 a.m. the other night," Whalen said. "They were lined up. That caught me off guard. I was sleepwalking through the airport."

Whalen is a native of Hutchinson, which is about 70 miles west of the Twin Cities. Minnesotans love their own, especially if they can actually play. Whalen is a highly skilled and feisty point guard, who was unlike anything the locals were used to seeing when she first arrived at the U.

Right off the bat, she routinely drove the lane against bigger players, found the open shooter, directed traffic and took the big shot. She also had a knack for bumping and harassing the opposition. It was love at first sight.

Whalen became a local star during her college years. Folks loved to hear the stories about how her mom, Kathy, used to buy her Barbie dolls, and young Lindsay would look at them for a while and then go outside and shoot baskets. But while there are some similarities between the Gophers' 2004 run and that of the Lynx this season, there are some major differences, too.

"I'm a little older now," she said. "It's seven years later."

Whalen isn't a kid anymore. And although this has been a lot of fun, it's also her livelihood. So far, a championship has proved to be elusive. The Gophers came up just short in 2004. In her first two years with the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA, Whalen went to the WNBA Finals, only to come up short again.

Her last appearance in the Finals, 2005, was particularly painful. Whalen played on a fractured kneecap and a sprained ankle. Still, she figured, there always was next year. After all, she had made it her first two seasons. But there wasn't a next year. The Sun never returned to the Finals. Two years ago, Whalen was traded to the Lynx.

"You really do think you'll be there every year," she said. "You think you'll be there all the time. You don't realize how hard it is. We all want this. We don't take it for granted."

A couple of years ago, Whalen noticed that younger players began asking for advice. At first, she was taken by surprise. It triggered something of a midlife basketball crisis. It was as if she went from young gun to wise veteran overnight. Laughing, she recalled going out on a mini-shopping spree to feel better.

"I really noticed it in my fifth year, once the kids who came into the league weren't in college when I was in college," she said. "But I look around and I see some older players, too. It just gives you hope that you can keep playing for as long as they do."

The WNBA game has changed during her tenure. Frankly, the level of play was horrible until just several years ago. The league has gotten better - and bigger.

"Everybody has such length," said Whalen, who is 5 feet 9. "I used to be able to drive the lane and finish over people. Now we have people touching the rim!"

In the days leading up to tonight's opener, Whalen has heard from many of her Gophers teammates. Janel McCarville, the other half of the dynamic duo, has been texting from Italy, where she is playing.

Everyone is excited for Whalen, who should have been with the Lynx from the time she turned pro, of course. The WNBA, struggling to gain traction with the public, messed up royally by not allowing teams to draft regionally. But now that she's back, it's as if she never left. Whalen often is recognized when she is out in public, although, she added with a laugh, she can control that a little bit, "depending on whether you put your hair up or down."

"People usually are just being really supportive," she said.

That's been the constant. She's a favorite here. And that's good for basketball in general and the Lynx in particular.